CRISIS UNDER OUR FEET

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     Aging infrastructure needs updating

Tiny Hobson City, population 866, may be the poster child for what can happen when a city’s underground infrastructure is ignored.

Incorporated in 1899, the predominantly black town spent years ignoring its underground water lines. The money brought in by water and sewer was considered income and didn’t necessarily stay with the water department. But underneath the city streets, the old water lines were deteriorating.

Thousands of gallons of water were leaking away, costing the city hundreds of dollars a month. It got to the point where the town was no longer taking in enough money from its customers to pay for the water it purchased from Anniston Water Works and Sewer Board. Over time, that debt grew until the mayor and Town Council had no choice.

“When I was elected as mayor, I inherited a $118,000 water bill,” said former Mayor Ralph T. Woods. “When I inquired about when was the last time the water bill was paid in full, they told me it was nine years ago.”

That was in 2004. He knew Anniston would eventually demand payment or shut off the water supply.

“Soon it would be off,” Woods said. “I knew that would come.”

Hobson city officials turned over the responsibility of billing and collection of the water bills to Anniston.

It’s a problem all water utilities eventually experience. The water and sewer lines age, begin leaking and need replacement.

“A lot of the underground infrastructure in the country was put in post-World War II, late ’40s, early ’50s,” said Jim Miller, general manager of Anniston Water Works and Sewer Board. “Now that stuff has hit the 50-, 60-, 70-year-old mark and it’s starting to fail.”

In Anniston, the first pipelines were laid in 1873. At least one of those, under 10th Street, is still being used today.

Fort McClellan was opened in 1917 and some of it’s original pipeline is still in service. The water works contracted a study to find out how much it would cost to bring just the Fort McClellan system up to standards — an estimated $17 million.

Yet Fort McClellan is only a portion of the underground lines the city maintains. The Anniston system has more than 600 miles of pipeline for water and 235 miles for sewer, and probably half of it is more than 50 years old.

Currently, the Anniston Water Works is working to replace all of its 2-inch water mains. It records the leaks and replaces the ones leaking the most. It does a couple of projects a year based on how much capital it can raise. In the past couple of years, it hasn’t been able to raise any money for capital projects.

“The question is, are we running the race fast enough?” Miller, said. “The answer is: I doubt it.” Oxford is facing the same issue. Wayne Livingston, general manager for Oxford Water Works and Sewer Board, said nearly two-thirds of the system’s underground pipelines are between 50 and 100 years old.

“Some of it’s 15, 20 feet underground and nobody sees it, so they just forget about it,” he said.

But that pipe is slowly deteriorating even as it goes undetected, and with so much old pipeline, a lot is breaking.

“It’s like a dog chasing its tail, you know,” Livingston said. “When you got so much deterioration, you go out there and you put out the fire’s, what it amounts to.”

The work is expensive. As the towns have grown up above the underground systems, streets have been paved over the pipes. Tearing up the streets to reach them is not only a huge inconvenience for residents; those streets have to be replaced when the work is finished.

Oxford has done some lining of pipes to avoid tearing up the streets, but that is also expensive. It takes specialized equipment and often has to be hired out, Livingston said.

“This re-lining, you don’t have to redo the streets, but it’s expensive because you have to have a company come in and do a lot of it,” he said.

Compounding the problem is that this infrastructure deterioration is becoming apparent during a deep recession. Raising rates to pay for the capital projects is difficult even in the best economy. Now, it is something no one wants to do.

“The deal is, is that someone is going to have to pay for that,” Miller said.

In the past couple of years, both systems have raised their rates. Anniston’s rates went up about 8 percent last year and the same this year. Oxford raised its minimum sewer rate 40 percent last year, to $10 per month. Its water rates have remained the same.

That’s just a prelude to where the rates may go, though. In large cities where the infrastructure problems are magnified, the rates have skyrocketed in recent years, Miller said.

“Jefferson County’s rates are unbelievable compared to what they were 10 years ago, because they’ve been required to fix everything that broke in Jefferson County in the last 100 years, in the last 10 years, under government consent orders” he said.

Part of the problem is the systems went for years without raising rates at all. Before the increase last year, Oxford hadn’t raised its rates in 14 years, Livingston said.

That hasn’t allowed the systems to accumulate enough money for the capital projects that are now becoming necessary. That leaves borrowing money the next best option, but eventually, the bill is still going to come due.

In Hobson City, the water leaks are slowly being repaired and water meters are being replaced. The city raised the water rates, and the city’s water debt is finally coming down. The cost in dollars, however, doesn’t measure what the city has lost in its independence.